Superman's Symbol. Pop Art. An Icon. The Original. An unique piece of Americana.

Superman's "S" emblem is all of these things and more.

As it is, Action Comics #1 is the
"Big Bang" of Super-Heroes. There is no "super" in
"hero" before "Super"man, after all. And if the Super-Hero is the modern "mythology" in our culture, then Superman began a tradition that is steeped in historic iconography.

As Dan Brown's Robert Langdon would likely point out, symbols have power, and when Superman, the first and most successful Super-Hero in history, sported a Symbol on his chest, pretty much every superhero after that did,
too (Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, etc.). And not just the ones from DC, either - Atlas/Marvel did the same thing
(at the beginning and even decades later, when they "reinvented" the
Super-Hero) with Captain America, The Whizzer, Destroyer, Blue Diamond, Union
Jack, Miss America, and then the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Daredevil and the lot of them. When people think
"Super Hero", they think of someone with a cape, tights and some kind of icon on their chest.

Superman's logo is instantly recognizable and
you can see it utilized in advertisements for pretty much anything you can
think of when someone wants to emphasize what they're doing is at the apex of
its ilk, to the extreme, of the highest degree, the greatest ever. When it
comes to attracting attention, Superman's symbol carries the day .

It didn't start out that way, though. Initially, it was not even considered a
significant part of his costume by his publisher. In hindsight, though, it
turned out to be the most important, overall, toward the end of protecting and
sustaining the ability to publish the character in perpetuity.

Superman has been an icon for over 70 years and his symbol was the first of
its kind. Prior to Superman, there was no such thing as a
"Super-Hero", nor was there such a thing as a "Super-Hero
Costume", nor was there a trademarked symbol that any fictional
character had worn prior to Superman. As The Original Super-Hero,
he and his symbol were the foundation upon which the comics industry has been
built. There would have been no comics "boom" in the late
1930's, no Batman, no Sub-Mariner, no Human Torch, no Captain America, no
Captain Marvel (Shazam! or otherwise) were there no Superman. There would be
no DC Comics as we know it today. Marvel Comics would never have become a
publisher of super-heroes and its Silver Age stable of characters (Spider-Man,
the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, The Hulk, The X-Men) would be
absolutely non-existent.

In 1945, National Periodical Publications (later simply known as "DC Comics") trademarked Superman's symbol, allowing
the ability to print his stories in perpetuity, rather than allowing the printed material to become public domain after 75
years, as was the norm at that time.
The ability to license and merchandise the character created another source of income for the comics industry.

Superman's symbol has become recognizable all over the world. However, at one time, it was not even very consistently drawn - and that is the crux of this article.
Prior to having trademarked the symbol, it went through a great deal of
metamorphosis (metamorphoses?). Here is the story as we know it.

NOTE: This page is currently under construction and will be updated as more information becomes available.

Metropolisplus.com has used primarily covers for the purposes of this article, as
that is the part of the comic which attracted the most attention and were provided with the most detail and were printed with the best available reproduction of the day.
We highly recommend the cover galleries for Action and Superman at
The Grand Comics Database, which we have found to be extremely valuable for general research.
While the images have been too small for our uses here, they were perfect for
getting a fast look at 50 covers of one title at a time and being able to
pinpoint the best covers to use.

In reviewing the symbol itself, first one must point to the origins of Superman.
Jerry
Siegel and Joe Shuster had created Superman years before he ever saw print. Only a few early drawings of Superman prior to publication survive to this day. Here is one of them, as published in Comic Book Marketplace #36:

As you can see, this symbol was quite different
than it would become upon publication, with the exception of the cover of
Action #1. Close inspection of superman's costume on the cover reveals
that this was the same costume, boots/straps and symbol (this image was taken
from Famous First Edition C-26, and we enhanced the coloring to follow the
actual lines drawn for the symbol and the boots to clarify the image).

A
representation of the first symbol (click here) in its earliest form
provided for
comparison. This shield represented something akin to the
shape of a police officer's badge (which would later become the shape of the hand-held shield of a later hero known as "The Guardian", who was a police officer in his secret identity - but
that's another story...).

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had intended Superman as a comic strip character, but had been turned down by numerous syndicates. When they prepared Superman for his first comic book appearance, Joe cannibalized the strips and reoriented them into page form with slight adjustments for the difference in medium.
Superman saw newspaper publication a year after his first comic book appearance and his appearance was similar, but you can see from the examples below that there was a considerable difference in the quality of reproduction. Superman's symbol takes on a triangular appearance in the pages of Action Comics,
newspaper comic strips and the first few issues of Superman Comics.

Superman only saw six other covers of Action Comics for the next 20 issues, one of which was a bit of a misrepresentation of his costume. The next time we see him on the cover of Action #7, his symbol appears more like that on the inside pages. This was further in evidence as late as 1940.

Alex Ross is a tremendous fan of this
particular symbol and has used it in his representation of Superman #1, as
well as using the above cover as the model for the statue he designed for The
Ultimate Superman Collection:

Below is the version that was
used around 1940 when the Fleischer Studios began their cartoon shorts of
Superman, as seen here with black in place of the typical yellow coloring in
the negative space and surrounded by yellow, rather than red:

Here
is a representation of the Fleischer/Black Symbol. While the black
background and yellow diamond could have simply been an artistic preference,
it appears to be an application of the Superman #4 cover symbol (see above),
which appeared around the same time as the first Fleischer films. [Note: Comic
book cover dates are much later than their actual appearance on the
newsstands, as many newsstands pulled books based on their cover dates.]
This approximate symbol also appeared as that used on the cover of a reprint
reissue volume of Superman's comic strip adventures.

There were several versions of the symbol as it
continued to be published. This cover by Paul Cassidy, published August
1940, was the first cover depiction of the next most popular version of the
symbol (as Joe Shuster drew less and less cover figures and his
"ghosts", like Fred Wray, John Sikela and Wayne Boring began to work more and further into
their own style). This
symbol had a bit larger "S" than is shown in most stories, but it is
far more difficult to get a clear shot of the symbol on interiors, so this
cover from Action #26 serves as the first cover appearance of this symbol.
Superman #7 follows suit, but mixes up the colors!

This was much closer to the current version, however, in late 1940, it underwent another odd change that went a bit further away from this version. The National Comics offices had a painting of Superman by H.J. Wray. I have seen photos taken in these offices that provided a sort of "before and after" version of Superman's symbol. Initially, the symbol
appeared in the inverted triangle form, however, later, the very same painting
had a much more elaborate version of the emblem. With this painting in the offices, there was an on-hand reference for those artists visiting the publisher.

With Superman #9 and #11, published in 1941, a difference from the initial triangle shield
began to take
form. The symbol appeared differently again and this is how the Golden Age symbol
was typically represented when artistic reference was used for the Golden Age/"Earth-2" Superman
being depicted:

There was one further evolution, which may have been due to
National realizing that this property had "legs" and was going to be
around for awhile. In order to be able to keep a property in publication
for longer than 75 years, one would have had to trademark part of that character's
appearance. Disney did it with Mickey Mouse and Superman was much easier
to pull off, due to the emblem on his chest. In 1944 - the very
next issue after Superman 25 - the trademarked version of the symbol appeared.

As mentioned previously, Superman has been Alex Ross's favorite character and Kingdom Come, like any story about heroes in the DC Universe, was a Superman story. When Superman
reappeared, his symbol took another turn in it's constant morphing. Alex was quoted as indicating that he had always liked the way the Fleischers used black in the negative areas, so he created a deceptively simple design utilizing that idea.

Think that the TV and Movie representations were
perfect? Think again! Each, individually, has been the industry's best
tries to date, with the
exception of "Superman Returns". George Reeves had a laudable
try in "The Adventures of Superman" on television (the same suit was
originally used in the Kirk Alyn serial).

As we neared the premier of "Superman Returns", we were consistently reminded of the importance of Superman's symbol. The trailers and teasers utilized it repeatedly and it
stirred the emotions of moviegoers and
web-surfers everywhere. While previous live- action versions of Superman in film or television
had not quite perfected the art of the "S" shield, this one tried a new tactic by going with a plastic relief (3-D) version that
was not only on his chest, but they included one on his belt... okay, maybe
not a very good choice.